Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/147

Rh not only distinct, but also in some degree antagonistic, through the application of the ordinary law of nutrition to their respective organs. The portions of the encephalon that are most employed will receive the largest supply of blood, and will be the seats of the most vigorous cell-growth, precisely as the same rule will apply to the development of muscle; while, on the other hand, a certain duration of disuse, or of restricted use, will occasion atrophic changes, and will be followed by that functional impairment which is a natural result of structural degeneration. It follows that men of the highest intellectual activity are often somewhat inattentive to impressions made upon their senses; and also that great sensational acuteness is often purchased at the cost of some torpor as regards the operations of the judgment.

Upon testing the educational customs of the present day by even the most elementary principles of psychology, it becomes apparent that a very large number of children receive precisely the kind of training which has been bestowed upon a learned pig. There are scarcely any teachers who have in the least degree studied the operations or the development of the mind (indeed, it is only within a very few years that this study has borne any fruit of great practical utility), and those who have not done so cannot realize the existence of a kind of learning which is sensational alone. Indeed, it is more in accordance with ordinary preconceptions to refer brute actions to a process of reasoning, than to consider that any human actions are automatic. The truth is, however, that the first impressions made upon the consciousness of a child have a strong natural tendency to expend themselves through the sensorium; and usually do so, unless directed higher by the manner in which they are produced or maintained. For the purpose of such direction, time is an element of the first importance, and the idea which would be grasped by the intelligence after a certain period of undisturbed attention, will excite the sensational faculties alone if that attention be diverted by the premature intrusion of something else that solicits notice. And while in almost every child the power of intelligent attention may be aroused by care, and perfected by perseverance, the natural inclination is toward a rapid succession of thoughts, variously associated, and remembered in their order without being understood. The faculty of comprehension, like all others, is a source of pleasure to the possessor, even in the first feeble attempts to bring it into exercise; and hence, as well as from the impulse given to nutrition, when once a habit of endeavoring to comprehend has been formed, although in very young children, it is not readily relinquished, but, on the contrary, is applied to the most unpromising materials.

In schools, however, under the stern pressure of the popular demand for knowledge, it is an extremely common practice to accumulate new impressions with greater rapidity than they can be received even by children who have enjoyed the inestimable advantage of early